Conduct a business download meeting. I meet with key stakeholders to learn everything I can about the business and the industry they compete in. Is the business itself growing or struggling? What about the industry as a whole? I use this time to learn what has worked and not worked from a PPC perspective and to determine if PPC performance goals are realistic and achievable (or if they exist at all).
Conduct a thorough account audit and gap analysis. Audits are time-consuming and tedious, but they’re absolutely necessary. I use the account audit to understand underlying drivers of performance and to determine whether work being done in the account is in alignment with business goals. Uncovering the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities provides critical information I need to form my guiding principle for account management.
It’s worth mentioning that some of these terms are still evolving, and their use is still being defined. For example, geo-targeting is often used synonymously with location targeting, for now, but that could change. Terms and meaning might shift over time as the technology and its uses evolve. But, like geo-targeting, we’ve got you covered right here, right now.
Svitlana Graves Svitlana Graves is a digital marketer with a focus on conversion optimization. She enjoys combining in-depth customer research with data to conduct smart experiments. At the moment Svitlana is taking clients’ revenues to new levels as part of CRO Team at 3Q Digital. On a personal note, Svitlana loves Latin Dance and foreign languages. She speaks 5 and is learning her 6th.
Finally, some strategies will drive both efficiency and growth within an account. For example, concluding an ad copy test based on CTR, conversion rate, or conversion per impression can increase revenue and improve ROI. However, these strategies typically show incremental long-term improvements, and are less likely to ramp revenue or improve ROAS in the short-term.

It’s also best to look for those businesses that are of a similar size as yours. For example, if you’re a solo entrepreneur selling handmade potholders online, big chain grocery stores usually aren’t your direct competitors, even if they might carry handmade potholders in their inventory. Instead, look for other small to medium scale producers of handmade potholders and similar kitchen accessories.

Conduct a thorough account audit and gap analysis. Audits are time-consuming and tedious, but they’re absolutely necessary. I use the account audit to understand underlying drivers of performance and to determine whether work being done in the account is in alignment with business goals. Uncovering the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities provides critical information I need to form my guiding principle for account management.
Sales BrochuresSales brochures provide a wealth of product information. You can learn how your competitor is positioning their product and company and what features and benefits they're using to sell their product. Try to obtain all new sales brochures and literature your competitor publishes. Significant changes in the content will indicate that new strategies are being employed.
As you can see, we not only changed which keywords to track (the core of the SERPs tool) but also the location setting of the search engine. As a local business, most of Jerry’s customers will come from the UK. Using this setting rather than the general Google setting will give him much more accurate results on how his keywords rank in his location.

Geo-targeting is virtually a necessity for businesses advertising online, since they cannot assume – as one can with traditional media, like newspapers or radio – where their audience is located. Luckily, this powerful tool is not hard to implement. For example, a small outfit like a pizza parlor with a finite delivery range can purchase online ads that only appear in the browsers of people with an IP address within the neighborhood. Geo-targeting also increases the opportunities for A/B testing. For example, a Japanese-speaking immigration lawyer in the U.S. may choose to run two separately geo-targeted campaigns: one locally for people looking to bring family over or maintain status in the country, and another one in Japan targeting people looking to emigrate.

WooRank is a freemium tool that provides an “instant website review.” Without a premium account, you are only allowed to generate a limited number of free reports, but you are able to view previously generated reports. Also, the tool currently offers a 7-day unlimited free trial, which gives you access to unlimited reviews. If you’re interested in purchasing a plan, the cheapest one is $49/month.
Location history of a consumer provides a lot of information specific to that person: where they like to shop, what they like to buy, how often they make the trip, and even how they get there. Obtaining this information gives great insight to marketers that enhances the ability to target consumers and deliver relevant, responsive location specific ads and information, even if the consumer is not currently in that area.
In reality, even profitability focused campaigns will have limits when it comes to budget, so our focus is often maximizing profitability within the budget we have allotted. This can mean bringing in fewer conversions at a lower cost per acquisition (CPA) and eliminating elements of campaigns that are under performing compared to your acceptable conversion goal. Mining search query reports, establishing negative keywords, bidding down on keywords with high CPA’s or no conversions are all techniques we employ in order to maximize our profitability within the parameters given.
Informational: These keywords represent the very beginning of the conversion process, and are not very likely to convert on the first visit. If you’re running a branding campaign you’ll want to be sure to include informational keywords on your list. If you’ve got a conversion goal, you still can’t afford to ignore these keywords as they make up the majority of searches. Informational keywords often use words/phrases like "how to", “do I need” and “where to find”. Consider these leads to be converted later via your website or a retargeting campaign.

The key to getting the most successful results from your PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns is developing a strategy that utilizes the many powerful tools at your disposal with Google Adwords. While boosting your clicks and conversions may at first seem like some sort of magical alchemy, there are actually tons of tangible ways to help drive traffic and increase sales. Best of all, Google is constantly adding new tools and refining older ones that you can add to your arsenal.

Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of bidding AdWords advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the ad space on its search results page. The “winners” are chosen based on a combination of factors, including the quality and relevance of their keywords and ad text, as well as the size of their keyword bids. For example, if WordStream bid on the keyword “PPC software,” our ad might show up in the very top spot on the Google results page.
Information from an analysis of the competitor's objectives, assumptions, strategy, and capabilities can be compiled into a response profile of possible moves that might be made by the competitor. This profile includes both potential offensive and defensive moves. The specific moves and their expected strength can be estimated using information gleaned from the analysis.
Generic keywords: These are generic words that describe your business as well as other businesses in your niche. They do not necessarily set your business apart from the million other businesses out there and ranking for these keywords is difficult given the immense competition for both paid and organic results. Nevertheless, these terms are likely to be used by your audience in the first stage of searching.
The first step in this process is determining who are the top four competitors that we want to use for this analysis. I like to use a mixture of direct business competitors (typically provided by my clients) and online search competitors, which can differ from whom a business identifies as their main competitors. Usually, this discrepancy is due to local business competitors versus those who are paying for online search ads. While your client may be concerned about the similar business down the street, their actual online competitor may be a business from a neighboring town or another state.